Feldman’s story on “ Four years after shark tank, 23-year-old, her best friend and her day build a $7M nut butter company ” explicitly demonstrates motivation as a cognitive process of organizational behavior. The story explicitly elaborates Keeley Tillotson and Erika Welsh’s motivation back in 2011 of growing their company by starting small while still in college. They lived in a tiny apartment, but this did not stop them from attaining their dream and before finishing college, they ended up on Shark Tank. Fast forward, the Portland-based Wild Friends nut butter company expects to register sales amounting to $7 million (Feldman, 2016). They have entered big markets like distributing to Whole Foods, Costco, Kroger and other supermarkets.
Motivation has been defined by many using words such as wants, desires, goals, drives, wants, incentives, aims, and motives (Latham, 2012). It is from this that one ascribes the story to the concept of motivation because it has a process that started with the girls’ psychological or physiological deficiency need that drove them to attain their end goal of becoming successful entrepreneurs. As such, the girls’ motivation lies in the relationship of their needs, drives and incentives. The need of the girl in creating their product was to ensure that their fellow millennials are able to eat healthy. Talking of drive, the girls were motivated to expand their business and thus, with the few incentives at their disposal, they saw a niche and wanted to capture the existing gap with regard to millennials preferences. As such, the few resources at their disposal is what made them establish their business and maximized on other resources like the expertise and knowledge of Bruce Tillotson, Keeley’s father who previously worked as the chief salesperson for Honest Tea.
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In the case of the two girls, their secondary motive is related to the reinforcement aspect and also their need for achievement and affiliation. In reference to the reinforcement issue, the story talks of Keeley’s father being present and sharing of ideas and advice relating to the “thorny issues of pricing and getting the products on the shelves” (Feldman, 2016). Moreover, Keeley ensures that they are all on the same page with the father by having phone conversations every single morning. Their need for affiliation looks at maintaining harmonious relationships and avoiding conflicts, working with people who are friendly and cooperative like the investor platform called CircleUp, and participating in pleasant social activities. The need for achievement in the case of Wild Friends nut Butter Company relates to developing a better way of doing something like using the crowdfunding site as a way of raising funds for their business.
All the stakeholders of the company exhibit intrinsic motives as it associates a person with the task at hand such as accomplishment, responsibility (Thomas, 2009). In the story, Mr. Tillotson has a sole responsibility of ensuring that all the products make it on shelves of their buyers in order to reach the end consumer. Keeley and Erika were also intrinsically motivated after being aired on the Shark Tank and they became competitive due to the challenge of the task at hand of looking for finances. As such, their meaningful work led them to obtaining the required capital that propelled to reach greater heights in their business.
The Porter-Lawler Motivation Model is a theory that best fits into the story because Keeley and Erika’s story is not all about motivation directly leading to performance, but rather other abilities and traits moderate the aspect of role perception (Stringer, Didham & Theivananthampillai, 2011).). As such, the model suggests that performance leads to satisfaction because the executive go beyond traditional measurement of attitudes.
In conclusion, motivation is a concept that needs to be embraced by all business personnel because it relates to performance and accomplishment of both business and employee needs.
References
Feldman, A. (2016, July 7). Four years after shark tank, 23-year-old, her best friend and dad
build a $7m nut butter company. Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2016/07/07/four-years-after-shark-tank-23- year-old-her-best-friend-and-her-dad-build-a-7m-nut-butter-company/#1c9c1a81d956
Latham, G. P. (2012). Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice. Thousand Oaks,
California: SAGE.
Stringer, C., Didham, J., & Theivananthampillai, P. (2011). Motivation, pay satisfaction, and job
satisfaction of front-line employees. Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management ,
8(2), 161-179.
Thomas, K. W. (2009). Intrinsic motivation at work: What really drives employee engagement
(2nd ed.). San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
